Weeknotes #1 - Breaking point

This post is a restart of a series that commenced on the Transport Futures blog. Its intent is to give an insight into the goings on inside Mobility Lab, and the sorts of things that we are up to and who we are talking to. You can see the previous posts by following the below links.

Weeknotes #1 | Weeknotes #2 | Weeknotes #3 | Weeknotes #4 | Weeknotes #5 | Weeknotes #6

We'll be honest. We spent most of this week not trying to be completely broken by the record-breaking heat here in the UK. Not helped by the small fact that we had meetings on the hottest day :(. But we still managed to get a fair amount done, and some projects progressed.

• Monday was spent on non-Mobility Lab things, actually. Our Founder James Gleave is slimming down his old Transport Futures blog, and spoke to one of our good friends Jeremy Dalton of Method City about options to improve it and make it more "newsy."
  
• On Tuesday, it was calls, calls, calls. Chats with Nic Cary and Teresa Jolley about our Mobility Lab Discovery Project and progressing to the next stage of interviewing people, a very positive chat with Kit Allwinter from Transport for Greater Manchester about the Transport Planning Camp and Future of  Mobility Scenario Game, and another chat that we have been sworn to secrecy on. Let's put it this way, it involves a very popular economics podcast, and a statistician with BBC's Test Match Special.
  
• Wednesday was admin day. Sorry, really boring this one.
  
• Thursday we spent having some more great conversations whilst NOT TRYING TO DIE. OMG THE HEAT IS THE WORST!! Early on, we spoke to Mike Rymarz about electric vehicle charging points of all things. This may seem weird, but when you are talking to local communities about different solutions that could be deployed, having a team of experts to bring into the conversation helps them to understand the benefits (and disbenefits) of each solution. We then popped over to Aylesbury to hear from Peter Parfitt of Buckinghamshire County Council to hear more about the ADEPT Living Lab Project taking place there. They have big plans for e-bikes, autonomous pods, and 5G in street lights.
  
• On Friday, we started to work on the outputs of the Policy Diagnosis Tool Project, which we hope to release by the end of next week. This will summarise the current challenges facing mobility policy makers in building public engagement into their strategy work. We are really excited to be publishing our first White Paper on the subject.